Imagine living in a world where science fiction is a reality.
You could teleport to work everyday, or jump through a wormhole
to visit friends on the other side of the galaxy. This may
sound like a faraway fantasy, but some experts believe that
nothing is impossible. As 2K Games' new
sci-fi horror shooter Prey,
is released we talk to some leading experts in the fields
of quantum teleportation and alien abduction to get their
theories as we investigate whether the sci-fi themes in Prey
hold any ground in the realms of reality...

Prey
opens with the hero, Tommy, being abducted by vicious, human
harvesting aliens, along with his entire town. While such
an event has never been documented Budd Hopkins, alien abduction
expert confirms that "there are many cases in which multiple
people are abducted at one time." One
such event allegedly took place on 08 December 1992 in Houston,
Texas.

Derrel
Sims, the chief abductions investigator for Houston UFO Network
(HUFON) set up an abductee's network from the local area to
try and "establish communications" with extraterrestrial alien
abductors. The results were overwhelming. Almost all of the
abductees involved reported being taken on 8th December 1992.
They all claimed to be aware of the other abductees aboard
the alien craft and described similar experiences involving
implants and questioning from their captors. Fortunately,
the only thing these Aliens wanted to harvest, was information.

Many
sceptics would argue that alien abduction is nothing more
than multiple cases of sleep paralysis accompanied by hallucinations.
That would not rationalise the Texas incident of 1992, as
Hopkins explains. "Sleep paralysis may account for some abduction
reports, but very few. It certainly does not explain abductions
that occur in broad daylight while a person is wide awake,
or one which involves or is witnessed by other people."

Hopkins
believes that the scepticism surrounding the phenomenon stems
from the fact that it "cannot be reproduced or measured in
a laboratory environment." So until we can reproduce elements
of alleged alien abductions in a laboratory all we have to
go on, regarding the existence of extra-terrestrials and their
kidnapping fetish, is anecdotal evidence.

The
abduction present in Prey and the teleportation portals
located throughout the mother ship would themselves require
advanced teleportation technology, the likes of which we will
not see in our lifetimes. The theories behind such teleportation
are in place, but their practical applications at the moment
are very limited. The
reality of the matter is, if we ever developed a technology
capable of teleporting humans, it would never be as glamorous
as the systems you see in Star Trek or Prey.

Talking
with Professor Samuel Braunstein of the University of York,
a more feasible solution would be a giant souped up fax machine,
of sorts. It would replicate every atom in the human body
and send an exact replica to another souped up fax machine
at another point in the universe. Sounds simple enough, but
in reality it is not, as the Professor explained: "Transmitting
this information over the best communication channel currently
available, it would take the age of a universe to complete
the transfer." That's about 100 million centuries.

"Even
if communication technology continued to improve at its current
rate, which is unlikely, over the next hundred years, it would
still take at least a century to deal with the vast amount
of information involved."

To give some idea of just how daunting the prospect of teleporting
a human is, Professor Braunstein explained that you would
fill a 10km cubed area with CD's containing the information
for just one human body. That's a lot of CD's, in fact, if
you laid them out one in front of the other they would stretch
for about 4,300,000,000,000 kilometres. That's roughly half
a light year.

The idea of the souped up fax machine throws up some interesting
possibilities. Not least the notion that you would be able
to teleport your "essence" as it were and replicate it within
a non-biological entity, such as a computer. Imagine being
able to access all of your thoughts and memories at the touch
of a button. A scarier notion would be someone else being
able to access them and such advances in technology would
require some fairly significant revisions from national security
agencies to avoid delicate information falling in to the wrong
hands.

Using
the fax machine theory, Tommy would have no problems rescuing
Jenny from the clutches of evil aliens, as every time he stepped
through a teleporter he would be replicating himself elsewhere
on the mother-ship, though having said, that so would the
aliens. It's probably just as well for him then that the sci-fi
technology present in Prey, remains exactly that, sci-fi.

With
thanks to Peter Oliver

Prey
is available to buy on Xbox 360 and PC from 14 July 2006,
and is released by Take 2 Interactive.

Order
Prey for Xbox 360 for £37.97 (RRP: £49.99)
by clicking hereOrder
Prey for PC for £21.97 (RRP: £34.99) by
clicking here